The Heist

by Michael A. Black

  Rick dropped the end of the hose down the hole, then set up some little orange pylons around the open area as a safety warning. Not that any self-respecting cop would take the time to get out of his car and actually go down there to check on him. He planned on hiding the ladder anyway.

  Once he had everything set up, the hose, the pylons, and the little Men At Work sign, Rick started the portable generator for the pumping machine on the back of Henry’s truck. It sputtered and squawked, but soon fell into the syncopated rhythm of a well-maintained engine. He slipped on his pack again, deciding to wear the coveralls down to at least the second level before taking them off, just in case. He unsnapped the aluminum extension ladder from the truck’s bed and carried it to the edge of the hole. It was constructed so that there were overlapping platforms at each level, allowing someone to descend by merely re-positioning the ladder each time.

  Rick set the thick metal rungs against the side and lowered it down to the first level. He pushed the hose down with it, then went down himself. The gaping maw of the first-level tunnel stretched out before him smelling wet and putrid. He picked up the ladder and lowered it down to the second level, glancing at his watch. One-forty-five. A little behind schedule. As he stepped on the rungs and started down he heard the chirping screeches and accompanying light-footed, quick movements. Rats, he thought. This place is probably loaded with them. The smell got worse the farther he went, but the furtive scurrying seemed to stop.

  Linc eased the washroom window down, then stepped over the glass on the floor. He shone his flashlight over the stalls and to the door. Silently, he moved to the door and opened it a crack. Nothing but more darkness, broken by the pale moonlight outlining a window on the hallway floor perhaps forty feet to his left. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to give Linc his bearings.

  Taking a few more minutes to check the hall, he pulled the door open and slid out. He moved swiftly, but cautiously, down toward the elevators. By the time he’d arrived, his movements had lost some of their stiffness and become more fluid. He slipped off the knapsack and swung it to the floor in front of him. With his mini-mag in his mouth, he searched through the pack and removed a long, thin screwdriver, a yellow plastic lantern, and more nylon rope. He was still wearing his Swiss-seat and D-ring.

  Linc readjusted the knapsack on his back again and focused the beam of his flashlight over the surface of the elevator, centering on the round hole about five inches below the top of the right-hand door. He inserted the screwdriver blade into the hole, felt around for the spring-loaded safety catch that kept the door from being opened when the elevator car wasn’t there, and twisted. The doors began to slide into the wall slots. Linc braced the door with his foot, preventing it from moving. He stuck the mini-mag between his teeth again and focused it on the lever mechanism inside. It was a flat steel beam that controlled the opening and closing of the doors. Looping the nylon rope around it several times and pulling it taut, Linc used a double square knot to secure the hitch. Then he grabbed the plastic lantern and twisted it on. The top extended to provide a lamp-like illumination. After securing it to the opposite end of the rope. He lay prone with his face over the edge and slowly lowered the lantern down the shaft. The area was actually rather large. More like a huge room with no walls. No floors either. Just lots of horizontal and vertical beams, within which the elevator cars were raised and lowered. Thick metal cables hung down at various intervals.

  Initially, the luminescence of the lantern bounced off the square walls, showing the gray cement and oily metal I-beams. Then the illumination faded, and finally it looked like a small white dot as it came to rest on the bottom with a plunk. Linc bounced it several times to make sure, then, satisfied that he had plenty of rope left, lowered the excess coils downward. It would have been quicker to drop the rope, but there were several cross beams and he couldn’t afford any tangles. As it was, he felt uncomfortable rappelling down the shaft in the dark. And it would be even darker after he let the doors slam shut. But it would be too slow to go down the stairs, and he would have his mini-mag. It would provide some brightness.

  Linc stood up, and after checking to make sure his knapsack was secure, slipped the rope through the D-ring once more. Then he backed over to the doors and tested the security of the knot. That was silly, he knew. He had to stop second guessing things. He’d tied it, therefore it was secure.

  I’d bet my life on it, he thought with a grim smile.

  He stepped onto the little ridge of cement on which the track for the elevator doors was affixed, then, swinging his body inside the shaft, slowly let the doors slide closed. The darkness enveloped him suddenly, and he stood there, hugging the doors, letting his eyes adjust. When his night vision was as good as he figured it was going to get, he twisted on the mini-mag and scanned the shaft again.

  The first crossbeam was about twenty feet down. There was no cable in the center, which meant that the elevator had to be suspended above him. The shaft next to him had a thick cable hanging down. That car must be downstairs. Looks like I picked the right shaft, he thought, and started his rappel. Linc kept the miniature flashlight in his mouth, occasionally turning to gauge his descent, gliding downward at a slow, careful pace, walking several steps with his feet against the wall every so often. As he passed the doors for each floor, he paused to note the number. It took him several minutes to get to the single digits. Five, four, three. . . As he paused at the third floor he heard something and froze. It was a laugh. A woman’s laugh.

  Hanging there in the darkness, his mouth popped open and he dropped the flashlight. It made a series of awful bangs before ending with a splash. Linc remained in place, cursing himself silently.

  “You hear something?” the woman’s voice asked.

  “Probably rats,” said a masculine counterpart. “Now are we gonna do it, or what?” The voice was full of impatience.

  “You think there are rats here?” Linc heard the woman say. Both the voices were husky whispers. They had to be close to the doors on the other side.

  “Don’t worry, baby. Any come around while we’re doin’ it, I’ll shoot their asses.”

  Security guards, thought Linc. They had to be security guards. It made sense. No power. No alarms. The fucking building was probably crawling with them. He felt another surge of panic rush through him. He had to get to the tunnel and find Rick. If he could do that without getting caught, they could get away. To hell with the fucking box.

  “Come on, baby, I got a hard-on all the way up to my chin.”

  “But what if Herman finds us?”

  “I told you, he’s sound asleep on the second floor, in Fielding’s office, and there’s no way he’s gonna walk up two flights of stairs,” the man said. “We got plenty of time.” Their voices were getting distant, like they were walking away. “Now all we have to do is go up to that nice couch in the employees’ lounge. . .” the voice trailed off. Linc stayed where he was, then slowly went down another floor. He couldn’t see very well, so he “walked” down the wall until he got to the next set of doors.

  He remembered Diane telling him about this hot-to-trot security girl who was supposedly “doing the do” with half the guards in the bank. That’s probably who it was. Hopefully she and the guy would be occupied for a while. But they’d mentioned someone else. Herman. Linc knew Herman from the times he’d been in visiting Diane and checking the place out. Herman was this fat old German guy who looked like his mind was on the little genie in the Jack Daniels bottle. Heavy, bulbous nose, mottled with busted veins, big gut, droopy eyes. No wonder the young lovers weren’t worried about him climbing the flight of stairs to the third floor. They were probably right, he was most likely sleeping it off somewhere.

  But Linc had to make sure. Regardless of what the lovers decided to do, he couldn’t afford to assume any loose ends would be tied up for him. Suddenly he realized that he was again thinking as if they were going ahead with it. Hadn’t he decided to abort the mission just a few moment
s ago? But why? If the two love-birds were so sure that Herman was sleeping it off, didn’t it then follow that there were probably only the three of them in the building? “Them” meaning security, he smiled. It was starting to seem feasible again. There was a little risk, sure, but they knew that going in. He felt for a toe-hold by the second floor doors and balanced himself. Then he moved his left hand along the top of the door until he found the safety-catch release. The doors to the second floor slid sideways into the walls.

  Linc stepped into the hall and doubled up the rope, letting the doors close softly on the folds. He disconnected the D-ring and moved across the shadowy hallway to the recess of a closed office door. Slipping off the knapsack, he felt around for his spare mini-mag. That was one thing the Corps had taught him: always carry a back-up. His gloved fingers soon found the metallic cylinder and he withdrew it and scanned the hallway. A legend was on the wall opposite the elevators and Linc studied the white, block letters, which listed Mr. R. Fielding’s office as Room 204.

  The numbers had been painted on each frosty glass pane in gold, and outlined in black. Room 204 was down at the far end of the hall. Linc tested the knob. Locked. He squatted and pressed his ear against the glass. There was a faint, intermittent, buzzing sound. He pressed harder. The sound persisted with monotonous regularity. Then he recognized it: Snoring. The fat old fart was snoring. With a devilish grin. Linc backed off from the door and twisted the flashlight on. He dug through the pack and came up with what he was looking for. A small, wedge-shaped piece of wood. Linc took the screwdriver out and worked it in between the door and the jamb near the bottom, pressing the door inward. Then he quickly slipped the wedge in between the door and the frame and forced it up toward the latch as far as he could. Old Herman would have a helluva a time opening the door now. The wedge would bind against the latch, making it damn near impossible to twist the knob.

  Almost gleefully, Linc went back to the elevator doors and pushed them open. Now, as long as the dude upstairs didn’t suffer from premature ejaculation, he and Rick would be in and out in no time. He held the flashlight tightly over his watch-dial, illuminating the radium-coated numbers to luminescence. One-forty-five. Rick was probably already at the tunnel waiting for him.

  Wednesday, April 15, 1992

  1:55 A.M.

  Rick had gone down to the third level of tunnels. He could hear the rush of water in the one below him, the one that was flooded. Flipping the catches on the ladder, he lowered the extension then placed it on its side, flat against the wall so that it was braced in place. Glancing upward he couldn’t even see the sky because of the alternating, overlapping platforms at each level. Nobody, he figured, would be able to see the ladder even if they shone a light directly down the grate. Plus he had pulled the grate back in place, more or less, before he had descended to the second platform.

  He looped the end of the black nylon rappelling rope around the side of the ladder and knotted the rope securely. As he moved away, he let the line extend with him so it would serve as a quick guide on the way back. Now all he had to do was follow the tunnel to the bank entrance. He and Linc had done that once before on one of their previous reconnoitering. He turned on his flashlight and moved through the tunnel. The walls were cold cement, with heavy angles that were squared off by rusted iron beams. The ceiling was high, seven or eight feet in most places, descending in two arches that gave the tunnel an almost medieval ambience. Rick felt like Errol Flynn in one of those old movies, rushing through the castle to save Olivia de Havilland. Suddenly the beam of light bounced over several sets of gleaming, beadlike eyes. More rats. They danced away from him as he advanced, emitting more of their high-pitched screams. His feet sloshed through a few inches of dark, scummy water. Condensation? As he paused to get his bearings, he felt something under his feet. A strange vibration, like something roiling beneath him. Ignoring it, he moved on. He couldn’t afford distractions. He had to press forward. The vibration seemed to fade.

  The ceiling in this place was covered with metal boxes and pipes that probably contained some kind of wiring or phone lines. Rick followed these lines because he knew they led to the bank tunnel entrance. As he turned and followed the overhead lines, he noticed something else. Little geysers of water had begun sprouting about half-way up the walls in this section. Suddenly Rick realized what the vibration was, and began a quick jog down the tunnel.

  Linc continued his cautious rappel. As he got down past the first basement level, he noticed that the light from the lantern he had lowered seemed to be out. He stopped himself again, freed his left hand from the rope, and took the mini-mag out of his mouth gripping it tightly and held it down between his legs so it shone the shaft. The lantern was floating in a pool of dirty-looking water. But it looked farther down than he had to go. He was almost at the second basement. That, according to his knowledge of the bank’s subterranean floors, was the level where the freight tunnel entrance was.

  A few more feet and the toes of his boots were resting on the edge of the elevator landing. He freed his left hand again and pressed down on the lever that worked the doors. It yielded easily and Linc’s flashlight beam explored the dusty cement floor and walls. Carton after carton of cardboard boxes were stacked in symmetrical rows. Linc walked out onto the solid floor, then pulled up the rest of the rope. He’d had about twenty feet to spare. Pretty good estimate, he thought to himself. He cut off the rope and let the remainder of the line above him hang in the shaft. No way he could go back up to retrieve it, but he figured that once things got running right, the friction of the elevator would take care of it. The maintenance guys would probably find it along with a lot of other shit when they cleaned out the bottom of the shaft after the flood.

  The lantern was useless. Supposed to be waterproof. Maybe I’ll get my money back, he thought with a grin, shoving the lantern and what was left of the rope into his knapsack. He moved between the stacks of boxes, heading for the west wall of the building. When Diane had smuggled them inside before, they’d spent several hours checking each floor, including the three basements. The maintenance guy had finally found them and, after swallowing their claim to be lost electricians trying to check the burglar alarms, showed them the bulkhead that led to the freight tunnel. The old guy had been mighty cordial, especially after Linc presented him with a brown bag containing a half-pint of Old Turkey, and they spent a long twenty minutes “taking a break” and discussing what assholes their respective bosses were. During this time, Rick had been checking what kind of lock was on the bulkhead door.

  It was one of those heavy-duty, hardened, chrome-covered security padlocks. That night, they’d promptly gone out and purchased several of them, then experimented to see what cut them the fastest. Nothing short of an acetylene torch seemed to have much effect. Even the longest bolt cutters barely made a scratch on the shackle, which was advertised as being able to withstand 6000 pounds of pressure. This pretty much deflated their plan until Diane calmly told them that all the keys had duplicates in the lock-box, to which she, owing to her position in the vault department, had occasional access. Rick told her the key should have American stamped on it and showed her pictures of what it should look like. The next opportunity she had, Diane merely picked up that key—it had been the only American in the box—and brought it home. Rick was able to make a duplicate, after which she replaced the original. Finally, Rick had sneaked in again, taking the elevator down to the archives with Diane, and checked the duplicate key in the heavy-duty lock. His uncle had taught him well. The big shackle popped open with a definitive click.

  Now the beam of Linc’s flashlight swept over the metal framework of the bulkhead. The metal door looked like something out of a submarine, or spaceship, all thick angular blocks of steel. The huge lock was laced through the circular hasp, securing the door. Linc felt in his pocket for the keys, took out the ring, and selected the duplicate that Rick had made. Inserting it in the lock, he gave a half-turn to the right. The lock popped open,
and he slid the shackle out of its holder. The door swung outward with a resonant creak.

  Rick leaned against the cement wall, his stocking hat rolled back on his head, his face covered with sweat.

  “About goddamned time,” he said. “This tunnel’s crawling with rats.”

  Linc placed his gloved index finger in front of his pursed lips.

  “We’ve got company upstairs,” he said in a hoarse whisper.

  They squatted between the caverns of cardboard boxes while they debated whether or not to abort the mission. Rick was all for getting out of there immediately and told Linc that there was no way he was going to spend the rest of his life in some prison. Linc managed to calm him with assurances. They were so close now, and the hardest part was already done. If they stuck to the plan, they’d be out of there in a flash. “With the cash,” he added.

  The plan called for them to get in and out without being noticed, so that, once it was done, nobody would even realize that they’d been there. Except Johnny “The Mink” Osmand, and he wasn’t going to be telling anybody. Along with the key to the bulkhead lock, Diane had also given them the master passkey to the safety deposit boxes and the combination to the basement vault. With the time lock off, all they had to do was use the combination and twist the wheel to open it. The broken window, the dangling rope in the elevator shaft, the wedge in the Bank President’s door. . . They were all minor things that wouldn’t add up to squat. It couldn’t have been more perfect. A dream come true. As long as it didn’t turn into a nightmare.